A CLERICAL AND PRESENT DANGER by Mieczyslaw Maneli The Catholic Church is Polish democracy

A CLERICAL AND PRESENT DANGER
by Mieczyslaw Maneli
The Catholic Church is Polish democracy's:
(a) best friend; (b) worst enemy; or (c) both.
How does this represent the threat of author-
itarian reaction in post-communist Europe?
The decline and fall of the Central and Eastern European
communist regimes has been progressing much faster than any of us
dared to anticipate. The profound and permanent economic crisis
devastating the entire communist world has proven that without
basic social and political change, those countries will be unable
to solve the many problems--malnutrition, skyrocketing foreign
debt, and the crying need for technological modernization, to name
but three--which continue to plague their societies.
It is with a bittersweet sense of satisfaction, therefore,
that I recall the articles and books I wrote from 1956 to 1968 as
a professor at Warsaw University, in which I argued that socialism
without democracy was an unworkable system, that democracy and due
process of law are not just social and political ideals but
economic potential and power as well. At the time, these concepts
were denounced as "revisionism," "defeatism," and
"counterrevolution" and I was dismissed from the university.
And yet today, witnessing the ruin of their kingdoms, the
more rational communist leaders have had to recognize the
elementary truth that without social freedoms, modern technology
cannot develop or spread; without private initiative, the whole
social and economic structure becomes stagnant. Suddenly the free
market economies of the West have become the ideal, the new vision
of paradise for the enslaved nations trying to liberate
themselves. (Of course, here in the West we already know that a
competitive, free market society is no paradise--affluence
coexists all too easily with poverty, and anti-democratic or
outright reactionary or totalitarian forces are constantly at work
and often frighteningly influential.)
As each of these countries moves into its post-communist
phase, we will observe new versions of the traditional conflicts
between freedom and persecution, democracy and despotism,
parliamentarianism and authoritarianism. We will observe the
struggle between newly acquired freedoms of religion and the
never-extinguished fanatical clericism trying to arrest this new
pluralism. We humanists should be aware that these newly
liberated nations, these foundling democracies, can be
particularly endangered by the right-wing authoritarianism
espoused by the various fanatics of clerical or semi-fascist
persuasion.
The danger of this clerical authoritarianism is especially
evident in Poland. In many respects, Poland is the most important
country in the communist chain, having reached the highest levels
of democratic development. Let us try to analyze the special role
of the Catholic Church there.
Over the last two years, a new era has dawned in the relations
between the Polish communist government and the Roman Catholic
Church, as well as in the relations between the Vatican and the
Polish Catholic hierarchy and lay people. Today, therefore, it is
again possible to speak about the Catholic Church of Poland
instead of the Catholic Church in Poland. Slowly, slowly, the
Gallic liberties prevailing in France, which were always anathema
to the Successor of Peter, are moving eastward, to the most fidel
of the fidels. Morbus gallicus ante portas; the Gallic sickness
is before the gates. At the same time, dogmatic and intolerant
traditionalist tendencies have been emerging among all levels of
the Polish clergy.
From the very inception of the communist regime in Poland in
the years 1944 to 1945, the Polish government was aware that it
could not blindly follow the Soviet example in its relationship
with the Church and with those people who identified themselves as
Poles and Catholics simultaneously. Although the new regime was
reputed to be atheistic and hostile to religion, the government
tried very hard to dispel those ideas and to persuade the people
that it was friendly towards traditional religious beliefs.
Priests and bishops were invited to participate in state
ceremonies in Warsaw and other cities. Sometimes they were even
asked to consecrate a new school building; for example, in June
1945, during the traditional Catholic procession of the Solemnity
of the Body and Blood of Christ, the communist mayor of Warsaw
held the arm of the Bishop of Warsaw according to pre-war
tradition.
Of course, this was before Stalinization, the forceful
imposition of Soviet economic, political, and ideological
institutions and laws on the occupied nations of Eastern Europe.
The first steps toward the Stalinization of Poland in 1948 put an
end to such conviviality. Even so, in 1950 the Catholic Church
and the Polish communist government signed an unprecedented accord
outlining their mutual spheres of interest and cooperation. After
further Stalinization, this accord was suspended. Many priests,
including the Primate of Poland, were arrested and restrictions
were placed on many aspects of the Church's existence.
The first Polish "thaw" following Stalin's death in 1953
brought a warming of state-church relations, culminating in the
fall of 1956 with "Polish October"--the first triumph of
democratic and progressive trends in the Communist Party and
government. It was also a serious--albeit temporary--defeat for
the Natolingroup, which was made up of the pro-Stalinist,
pro-Soviet, entrenched special interests of the Polish
nomenclatura (the professional bureaucracy, army, and security
establishments). Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, then Primate of
Poland, was released from jail and personally driven to Warsaw by
Zenon Kliszko, the number-two man in Gomulka's new Politburo.
Although there were stormy months to come, the fundamentals of
this new alliance not only endured, but broadened and deepened
throughout the period from 1956 to 1989.
Indeed, until 1989, every communist regime in Poland has owed
its relative stability not only to the threat of Soviet tanks, but
also to the moderating influence of the Catholic hierarchy in
Poland. During the last two decades, and particularly in the
dramatic years of 1968, 1970, 1980 to 1981, and finally 1988 to
1989, it was the Catholic Church which appealed to the political
wisdom and spirit of moderation of the Polish nation. Throughout
the last forty years, every well-read contemporary politician and
every reasonable and enlightened student of Polish affairs or
East-West relations has understood that any uprising of Polish
patriots against the government would have resulted in a national
disaster: cruel suppression of the rebellion, destruction of many
cities and industrial plants, arrests and the partial
extermination of the Polish intelligentsia, bloody terror against
the Catholic Church, and severe reprisals against the clergy. On
the other hand, every political crisis in Poland which was handled
relatively peacefully by the government with the moral support of
the Church has weakened the social, political, and moral basis of
the Communist Party and strengthened the influence of the Catholic
Church, thereby increasing her material strength and independence.
Moreover, the election of a Polish Pope in 1978 effectively
capped the creation of the strangest political superstructure in
the world, a phenomenon unforeseen by Marx, Engels, Lenin, or
anyone else. On the material basis of "socialist economic
relations" the Communist Party built its political
superstructure--the bureaucracy of the State and the Party
apparatus--yet the ideological and moral elements of the
superstructure were largely controlled by the Catholic Church and
its lay agencies and clubs. Until recently, such a symbiosis was
unique in the world. Moreover, it seems that the future
pilgrimage of John Paul II to the Soviet Union will open up
astounding new avenues of cooperation between obsolete communism
and a church longing for rejuvenation.
Now, with the advent of the new opposition government--its
Catholic Prime Minister and predominantly Catholic parliamentary
majority (total in the Senate, limited in the Sejm or lower
chamber)--the reactionary forces within the Polish Catholic Church
have been revived. Their object is to transform the new free
Poland into a state run by obscurantist clerical
authoritarianism. The main spokesman of this proverbial
Ciemnogrod (Kingdom of Darkness, in Hobbesian terminology) is the
current Primate of Poland, Cardinal Jozef Glemp.
Over the years, social groups such as the Clubs of Catholic
Intellectuals and Catholic publications such as Znak (Sign), Wiez
(Link, edited by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the new Prime Minister), and
Tygodnik Powszechny (Catholic Weekly, edited by Jerzy Turowicz)
have gained enormous prestige in Poland thanks to their forceful
opposition to Communist totalitarianism as well as their
intellectual depth and liberal Western ideas and attitudes. In
this way, they have also contributed to the prestige of
Catholicism and of the Catholic Church. Cardinal Glemp and his
followers wish to seize the fruits of these achievements and
promote a right-wing political reaction, supporting their
clerical authoritarianism on the backs of creative Catholic
intellectuals but against their ideals.
The controversy over the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz was
the first serious sign that new political trenches are being dug
and new political battles have begun. The subject of the dispute
is well known: a few years ago, the nuns of a Polish Carmelite
order set up their convent at Auschwitz in a building that had
served during the German occupation as a warehouse for the storage
of Zyklon-B canisters used in the Nazi gas chambers. In 1983,
UNESCO designated the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camp sites as a
special memorial to humanity; these sites included the former
poison gas canister warehouse now occupied by the Carmelite nuns.
Various Jewish organizations in Europe and the United States
regarded the presence of the Catholic convent as an affront.
Their objections were shared by many Christian--especially
Catholic--theologians and lay intellectuals; therefore, in order
to find a reasonable solution to the potential conflict, a Jewish-
Catholic conference was organized in 1987 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Catholic Church was represented by such eminent personalities,
among others, as the Primate of Belgium, the Cardinals of Lyon and
Paris, France, and Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, Archbishop of
Cracow, in whose diocese the Auschwitz and Birkenau camp sites are
located. Members of Sign and Catholic Weekly were also present.
The conference participants unanimously agreed to construct a
special new building near the camps in which people of all faiths
would be able to worship, and to relocate the Carmelite nuns by
February 1989.
However, by February 1989, construction of the new worship
center hadn't even been started. The Polish Catholic Church was
responsible for the construction of the building, but it pleaded
that it was unable to fulfill this obligation for a number of
reasons. Unfortunately, Church authorities did not in due course
inform the interested parties of the causes of the delay, nor did
it submit the new schedule for construction. This was the
immediate cause of the misunderstanding, and it led to many bitter
accusations and counteraccusations. The nuns remained in their
controversial quarters and Jewish organizations in the United
States and Europe once again raised their voices in protest and
anger.
Events took an ugly and tragic turn when New York City rabbi
Avi Weiss and a group of his followers climbed the convent fence
and were doused with water and forcibly removed from the grounds
by workers while a crowd of people jeered and the police looked on
passively. Following these events, the controversy became
headline news both in Europe and the United States. Cardinal
Macharski made an awkward and most regrettable announcement that
the prevailing atmosphere and protest activities at Auschwitz
would impede the future construction of the new worship center and
the transfer of the Carmelite nuns; it is not clear whether he was
making excuses for the footdragging or pleading for calm.
Then, on August 26, 1989, Cardinal Jozef Glemp delivered an
address at the Shrine of the Black Virgin in the city of
Czestochowa. He announced that the 1987 agreement should be
regarded as null because the representatives of the Catholic
Church who signed it were "incompetent." He also declared that
the agreement was anti-Polish and that the Jews were using their
influence on the world media to engage in anti-Polish propaganda.
The reactions to this bilious address were predictable
enough. The French and Belgian Cardinals denounced the speech and
made one simple point: if they were not competent to speak in the
name of the Catholic Church, then who was? Cardinal John J.
O'Connor of New York characterized Glemp's speech as shocking.
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, regarded (rightly or wrongly) as
one of the most conservative cardinals in the United States, wrote
a special letter to Glemp stressing that the Polish Primate's
upcoming visit to the United States, planned for the fall of 1989,
would be undesirable and should be cancelled. An even more
forceful letter was dispatched by Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of
Chicago, whose diocese contains the largest number of Catholic
Polish-Americans, stating that it might be difficult to ensure the
safety of the Polish Primate while he was in Chicago.
All throughout the controversy, the Vatican tried to avoid
getting involved on the pretext that the matter was a purely
internal affair of the Polish Catholic Church into which the Pope
did not wish to intrude. Finally, however, the atmosphere became
so rancorous that the Vatican was forced to intervene. In the
form of a delicate suggestion, Rome declared that pacta sunt
servanda--the Geneva Agreement of 1987 should be enforced. The
Primate of Poland was discredited, and after a brief period of
resistance Cardinal Glemp publicly recanted his words. Roma
locuta, causa finita--Rome has spoken, end of the controversy.
The Auschwitz convent controversy just may have been the
beginning of something much larger, however. In fact, I would
argue that the conflict over the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz
was merely the first battle waged between internal forces in
Poland--the champions of the newly won democratic freedoms,
Western, liberal, and humanistic in their outlook, versus a
newly revived authoritarian clergy--over the future of Polish
democracy itself.
To appreciate this, we must first analyze the politics within
the hierarchy of the Catholic Church itself. Cardinal Franciszek
Macharski, co-architect of the 1987 Geneva Agreement and one of
the finest intellectuals in Poland, was selected to head the
diocese of Cracow--possibly the most prestigious in the country--
by Pope John Paul II himself. In this diocese, under Macharski's
personal care and theological guidance, is an important group of
Catholic thinkers who write and publish both Sign and Catholic
Weekly. The moral authority of this group, within both Poland and
the Vatican, is immense. Cardinal Jozef Glemp, on the other hand,
is unpopular with the Vatican and disesteemed by Pope John Paul II
himself--it was particularly insulting for the Primate to be kept
waiting for days when he journeyed to Rome for an audience with
the Pope. Over the years, Glemp has forged closer relations with
arch-conservative groups within the Vatican. He has also formed
ties with the anti-reformist and staunchly conservative Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, who has himself been rebuked several
times by the Pope. Ratzinger chairs the Vatican Congregation for
Doctrine of Faith (successor of the Sacred Officium), through
which he tries to keep the spirit of the Inquisition alive and
flourishing.
Glemp could not possibly confront the Pope directly, but by
renouncing the Geneva Agreement he could strike at friends of the
Pope--not only Cardinal Macharski, but also Cardinal Jean-Marie
Lustiger of Paris, another well-known protege of John Paul II. As
a result, a convergence of interests developed between the Polish
Primate and the anti-Polish, anti-reformist elements within the
Vatican and elsewhere in the international hierarchy of the
Catholic Church. These elements, exemplified by Cardinal
Ratzinger, were interested in discrediting the entire Polish
Catholic Church and clergy, whose influence, power, and authority
had increased to dangerous proportions in recent years, due not
only to the Polish Pope but also because every second priest
ordained in the Western world is of Polish extraction. This is
the reason why such arch-conservative, anti-Polish, and
anti-reformist elements were all too happy to encourage Cardinal
Glemp, a man of vanity and ambition, to play a role ultimately
(and predictably) harmful to himself but useful for the
adversaries of the Pope and of the Polish Catholic Church.
The exchange of blows initiated by Cardinal Glemp certainly
served this purpose, provoking a most unseemly and unpleasant
fracas within the Polish Catholic Church at a time when the
Church was enjoying the luster of its contributions to Polish
democracy. Although Pope John Paul II finally took a stand on the
controversy, his delay in responding afforded a new weapon to his
adversaries, who portrayed him as an indecisive leader. As
Niccolo Machiavelli has observed, the world never forgives such
moments of weakness in women or in politicians.
Of course, Glemp also wanted to curry favor with the most
backward and reactionary elements in Polish society through his
attack on Cardinal Macharski and the reform-minded Western
cardinals. This is one reason why he combined his attack on the
Geneva Agreement with a volley of blatantly ant-Semitic remarks.
There are two groups in Poland which would be pleased by the
failure of the new Polish government, whose success depends on the
cooperation of Solidarity, the Catholic Church, and certain
elements of the Communist Party. The first of these two groups--
and the most influental and powerful--consists of the old
Stalinist hardliners who still occupy key positions in the
security and military forces, in the party hierarchy, and in the
administrative agencies. The second group consists of traditional
Polish right-wingers who were allied with various nationalistic
and fascist groups before World War II, including the Stronnictwo
Narodowe (National Party) of Roman Dmowski, which counted Cardinal
Glemp as one of its own. Before World War II, the main slogans of
the National Party were anti-Semitic and anti-Communist; they
praised the authoritarian regimes of Mussolini and, later,
Hitler. Both the Polish right-wingers and the Stalinist
hardliners have been critical of the recent democratic reforms in
Poland, and naturally both were delighted by the controversy over
the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz; this was precisely the kind of
messy internicine battle they wanted. Once more they were allowed
to trot out their hoary old Nazi/Bolshevik propaganda: that
Western democracy is fundamentally rotten, and anti-Polish to
boot--as evidenced by the activity of the Catholic cardinals in
such decadent countries as Belgium and France.
The Stalinist hardliners in the Soviet Communist Party,
opposed as they are to Mikhail Gorbachev's bold reformism, were
also delighted by the Auschwitz convent controversy, which held
out the promise of sowing poisonous dissent in Poland at a time
when cooperation was crucial. They also hope that no massive
economic aid will be forthcoming from the West: in this way, the
economic situation in Poland will deteriorate so badly that there
will be new reason for a military coup. Their logic is simple:
any blows to the democratic reforms in Poland, especially anything
that provokes widespread and dangerous unrest, will hurt Gorbachev
and even cripple his policies of perestroika, glasnost,
liberalization, and peaceful competition with the West. Glemp's
anti-Semitic slogans helped to mobilize the most uneducated,
backward elements of Polish society--here is the paradox--in
support of Stalinist reaction.
And so Polish right-wingers forged a strange alliance with
Stalinist hardliners in their own country, and also helped to
serve the interests of hardliners in the Soviet Communist Party
who hope to reverse Gorbachev's experiments in liberal reforms.
Anti-Semitism, anti-intellectualism, and authoritarianism are the
cements which unite them, and they are pleased that the Primate of
Poland--dogmatic, unreasonable, and lacking political
imagination--has assented to become the spokesman for his
country's own worst enemies.
The leaders of Solidarity immediately perceived the dangers
of Glemp's homily and were quick to denounce it. They knew that
the stakes were high: the soul of Solidarity and the shape of
Polish democracy. Catholic Weekly also acted quickly. After the
Vatican intervened in the Auschwitz controversy, Cardinal Glemp
reluctantly accepted Catholic Weekly's invitation for an interview
and recanted his previous shameful statements--albeit in the style
prescribed by Orwell's Ministry of Truth. Between the lines, one
can read Glemp's continuing desire to substitute a clerical
authoritarianism, colored by pre-war fascist tendencies, for the
prevailing liberal and humanistic philosophy of Solidarity's
current leadership and its enlightened Catholic allies. Like
Solzhenitsyn, the Polish reactionaries represented by Glemp oppose
communism but favor a crackpot militaristic nationalism. Like the
Russian group Pamiat (Memory), they want to replace communist
dictatorship with a chauvinistic "white guard" clerical regime
that will fulfill the mystical demands of the national soul; they
hold in contemptuous regard the "decadent" freedoms and tolerance
of the democratic West.
The present leadership of Solidarity--including Lech Walesa,
Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Adam Michnik, Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron,
Andrzej Stelmachowski (the Marshall of the Senate), and
others--are sincere Western-style democrats and humanists; they
support a gradual, peaceful, and systematic evolution towards a
free-market economy, parliamentary democracy, national
independence, and a welfare state. It should also be stressed
that their notions of government embrace a well-elaborated
concept of Catholic social doctrine, that of the developmental
"third road" (noncapitalist and nonsocialist) traditionally
espoused by the Popes, beginning in 1891 with Leo XIII and his
encyclical Rerum Novarum and continuing through John XXIII up to
John Paul II.
Of course, in the eyes of certain hardline Western
conservatives, this constitutes "creeping communism." No wonder,
then, that Senator Jesse Helms and the members of the Heritage
Foundation prefer the Polish right-wingers to the present
"social-democratic" leadership of Solidarity. There is one other
element uniting various Polish right-wingers with certain Western
Cold Warriors: they do not wish to transform the existing
communist system by means of evolutionary democratic reform--
rather, they want the immediate and total collapse of all
communist parties and regimes. They naively think that in this
way, the hydra of communism will be eradicated once and for all.
These simpletons do not understand that during its death agony the
hydra may destroy the world; that the hydra has many heads which
may regenerate; that these nations are fed up with all wars for
the sake of paradise, including a new revolution for the sake of
that kingdom of happiness called "free enterprise." These
right-wingers, East and West, are indeed bolsheviks a rebours--as
zealous as their old hardline bolshevik counterparts.
During the years 1987 to 1988, the Polish communist regime
realized that its fate depended on cooperation with the Catholic
Church and the semi-legal opposition groups centered around
Solidarity. The wave of strikes that staggered the country made
2t clear that the old regime was unable to govern any longer using
the old methods. Moreover, both the Polish Communist Party and
the opposition forces had already drawn all the necessary
conclusions from the Soviet interventions in Berlin (1953),
Budapest (1956), and Prague (1968); from the years of stagnation
and terror; from the imposition of martial law; and from Vatican
realpolitik and communist "strategy." Thus, the oppressors and
their prisoners met at the Round Table to liberate Poland, to
ensure new economic, social, and political order without provoking
the Soviet Union by seeming to endanger its crumbling Warsaw Pact
empire.
Nevertheless, the Polish compromise and the peaceful transfer
of power to the new noncommunist administration became a barrel of
dynamite that was to explode in Eastern Europe. For the communist
system, the example of Poland was dangerous indeed. Finally, the
infamous domino theory started to work--not in Asia, but in
Eastern Europe with the rapid fall of consecutive communist
regimes: Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and
finally Romania. Moreover, except for the fearsome violence
attending the collapse of the Ceauceauscu regime in Romania, these
revolutions have been unexpectedly bloodless. This "incredible
lightness" of the revolutions--their strange peacefulness and lack
of violence--actually poses some hidden dangers. It can be a
source not only wishful thinking and harmful illusion, but also of
autocratic--be it fascist or neo-Stalinist--counterrevolution. In
every Eastern European country, there are legions of newly
unemployed workers and professionals and bands of disgruntled
former "luminaries" to lead them. Exacerbated by economic crisis,
this is the social basis for a new demagoguery--of whatever
threatening stripe--to build its influence and power.
When Cardinal Glemp struck out against the "incompetence" of
certain liberal Western European and Polish cardinals, he signaled
the start of the battle between reactionary elements within the
Catholic Church and Polish and Western liberal humanists,
reformists, and adherents of anticlerical, antichauvinist
parliamentary democracy. The battle which Cardinal Glemp
initiated with his anti-Semitic salvo is a battle for the soul of
Solidarity and the future of the Polish nation itself.
However, it must be stressed that this is not merely an
internal Polish conflict. The Auschwitz convent affair is but the
first indication of the assault that authoritarian forces will
mount against the democratic, reformist trends in the communist
nations of Eastern Europe. These reactionary elements are even
prepared to enter into alliances with neo-Stalinist communist
hardliners who have their own agenda for strangling the infant
democracies in their cradles. There is a real danger that the end
result of this treachery may be the replacement of the communist
dictatorships with some form of authoritarian government--be it
clerical, nationalistic, fascist, or neo-Stalinist.
Western humanist organizations should monitor these dangerous
developments and fight those groups or individuals in our own
countries who would support such anti-democratic attempts. The
"cult" of the communist personality must not be replaced by the
cult of the clerical personality--or by any other form of authori-
tarianism--but, rather, by rationality, tolerance, and constitu-
tional guarantees of the rights to freedom of speech, conscience,
and thought.
In view of this, it is important that we remain in touch with
the newly organized humanist groups in Central and Eastern Europe.
[Editor's Note: To this end, the International Humanist and
Ethical Union has become active in organizing Humanist groups in
former communist countries and bringing new organizations into
IHEU membership. To contact the IHEU to learn more about this,
write or call --
ERICA SCHULTE NORDHOLT
IHEU
NIEUWEGRACHT 69a
3512 LG UTRECHT
THE NETHERLANDS
Phone: 011-31-30-312155
FAX: 011-31-30-364169 ]
For while the victories of liberty and reason in Central and
Eastern Europe are magnificent, the tree of freedom is still
fragile and exposed to many hostile winds.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Mieczyslaw Maneli, former member of the board of directors of the
American Humanist Association, is a professor of law and political
science at Queens College in New York City. He is the author of
fifteen books, including _Freedom and Tolerance_ and _Juridical
Positivism and Human Rights_.
This is the original text of an article that appeared in the
March/April 1990 issue of The Humanist, pp. 19-23, 36--though the
editor's note in the last paragraph was added in January 1994.
(C) Copyright 1990 by Mieczyslaw Maneli
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